An article in the Boston Herald reports that the slowed economy has caused more women to cut back on beauty treatments like waxing, hair color, manicures and pedicures, and various injections. A bikini wax every six weeks instead of every four, or a haircut sans highlights—anything to save a buck here and there.

Other women are capitalizing on the “staycation” trend by giving themselves at-home beauty treatments. Blogger Kathleen Burns Kingsbury says she follows the recommendation that polished nails are “a must for any professional woman in today’s competitive market.” So when gas prices rose and her business slowed, Kingsbury started giving herself “poor man’s pedicures” at home.

Skipping her typically luxurious $40 pampering sessions awakened Kingsbury to a puzzling, if not ridiculous concept: the irony that women “make 76 percent of what men make and spend millions on looking ‘professional.’”

But American women’s obsession with beauty, and the connection between success and beauty is nothing new. Times of London writer Tad Safran gives a scathing synopsis of the differing beauty regimes of British and American women.

Safran says British women “appear unable, or uninterested, in rising to the challenge” of putting an effort toward personal appearance, while his American female friends happily cough up thousands of dollars for beauty and fitness every month.

Even when economic times are tough, American women don’t seem to abandon their personal appearance. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, for example, Leonard Lauder, chairman of the Estee Lauder Companies, said his lipstick sales were up, as women boosted their moods with lipstick rather than expensive shoes.

NPR’s “News and Notes” program featured a discussion with Darryl Roberts, the filmmaker of a new documentary that explores America’s beauty obsession.

In making “America the Beautiful,” Roberts asked himself what “stupid things” he’d done for beauty. The film touches on the influence of advertising, racial intolerances in society, the self-esteem of teenage girls, and the story of model/actress Gerren Taylor, who suffered from eating disorders after her modeling career began floundering.

Economists have attributed the increasing number of stay-at-home mothers to cultural shifts, but the New York Times’s Louis Uchitelle asserts that the flailing economy has driven an unprecedented number of women out of the workforce. Some women said the price of gas and daycare made going to work too expensive.

America’s slowed economy has not affected all cosmetic procedures. Facelifts are up 14 percent this year, but new procedures have taken the place of the “tight and taut” look. Celebrities and wealthy patients are opting for new procedures that create fuller cheeks and re-suspended facial muscles.

A post on the Condé Nast blog Product Fiend focused on at-home beauty treatments, but the blogger was left unsatisfied and un-relaxed by her efforts. She writes, “in my case, it is a total waste of time, because now I feel like I want a maximum strength mani-pedi more than ever.”

Allure magazine blogger Jessica Matlin discussed the joy lipstick can bring to a woman on a tight budget. Matlin writes, “Even when you have your nose pressed up [against] the glass case that holds those not-in-your-budget treats, at least you’ll see the reflection of a polished, confident, lipsticked woman staring back.”